{"id":6287,"date":"2025-02-18T23:34:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T23:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-fbi-pick-one-step-closer-to-confirmation\/"},"modified":"2025-02-18T23:34:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T23:34:03","slug":"trumps-fbi-pick-one-step-closer-to-confirmation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-fbi-pick-one-step-closer-to-confirmation\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s FBI pick one step closer to confirmation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Kash Patel, the controversial nominee to lead the FBI, cleared another key procedural hurdle Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Senate voted 48-45 to move forward with Patel\u2019s nomination, setting up his confirmation vote in the coming days to helm the agency for a 10-year term.<\/p>\n

Patel, if confirmed, is set to be a central figure in President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to leverage his powers against perceived enemies. A former House staffer who worked to discredit the congressional inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Patel has promised to go after Trump\u2019s adversaries and shut down the FBI\u2019s Washington headquarters on Day 1 of his tenure to create “a museum” of the \u201cdeep state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have argued that Patel would put fealty to the president ahead of his duties as FBI director and accused the nominee of helping from outside the federal government to orchestrate the agency\u2019s recent leadership shakeup. They asked for a second hearing<\/a>to question Patel on that matter and others \u2014 a request swiftly denied by Chair Chuck Grassley, who argued the request amounted to an attempt to undermine the 2024 election results giving Trump the prerogative to staff his own administration.<\/p>\n

In his first, and only, confirmation hearing<\/a>, Patel distanced himself from his work with the \u201cJ6 prison choir,\u201d formed by a group of people incarcerated for participating in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. He failed to provide a definitive answer on whether Trump lost the 2020 election and declined to provide details on his testimony as part of the investigation into Trump\u2019s retention of classified documents.<\/p>\n

Trump announced Patel\u2019s nomination in December, moving to oust then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump selected in his first administration before souring on him. In departing his post last month, Wray \u2014 who Trump accused of weaponizing the agency \u2014 said in a parting message<\/a> to colleagues they should remain independent and stay away from politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kash Patel, the controversial nominee to lead the FBI, cleared another key procedural hurdle Tuesday. The Senate voted 48-45 to move forward with Patel\u2019s nomination, setting up his confirmation vote in the coming days to helm the agency for a 10-year term. Patel, if confirmed, is set to be a central figure in President Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}